Error Messages; Exception Messages; Gather Information For Vmware Customer Support - VMware VCM 5.3 Troubleshooting Manual

VCM Troubleshooting Guide

Error Messages

Error messages indicate a more serious problem. VCM processes will not halt because of an error, but
they may not be able to continue normally. For example, if the collection of a specific data type produces a
value that is not of the same type the database is expecting, VCM may have to discard the collected
information for that entire data type. This would produce an error message to highlight the fact that
something did not work properly during the latest process. In this case, VCM was able to recover and
continue, but perhaps not with the desired result.

Exception Messages

Exceptions messages indicate a fatal problem that VCM cannot handle. These types of problems will likely
cause a complete failure of the current process. One common exception occurs with overseas customers.
When a collector machine is set up to use a regional date/time notation other than English (United States),
which uses a date/time notation of mm/dd/yyyy to represent the date, collections to UNIX machines will
usually fail. Many European date/time notations use dd/mm/yyyy to represent the date. The message
reported in the debug log is an exception with the message "Arithmetic overflow converting expression to
a data type datetime." In essence, this message states that VCM could not convert the UNIX date/time
notation to the date/time notation used by the SQL database. With this exception occurring, complete
UNIX collections will fail.

Gather Information for VMware Customer Support

When reporting an issue to VMware Customer Support, you will save a great deal of time if you are
prepared with as much information about the problem as possible. Use the "Types of Problems" section of
this document to determine which diagnostic files VMware Customer Support will need in order to
analyze the behavior.
12 VMware, Inc.